Listener
by embyr-75
Summary: A grieving princess discovers the value of a good listener. [Cover art by Villtura]


_A/N: A fic request. Amazing cover art by the immensely talented Villtura._

**—Listener—**

The Throne Room was in a state. The great columns had all been demolished, and there was a massive hole in the ceiling. Jagged slabs of brick and mortar littered the floor. The goddesses were in pieces, staring up at her out of empty eyes. Din's hands still clung to the Triforce, as though to protect it from usurpers. A lot of good that had done them.

Zelda navigated the debris slowly, making her way across the shreds of tattered carpet and flagstones, up fractured steps, and came to the judgment seat. She touched the throne's arm, lips drawn, and glanced down at Nayru.

"We're quite a pair, you and I," she murmured to the marble. "What must they think of us?"

The goddess didn't answer. She resigned herself to the silence with an empty sigh, turning to sit on her ill-begotten throne, and bowed her head into her hands.

Nothing had gone right since her ascension. It was easy to say that it was all circumstances beyond her control—that an invasion from another realm and an ancient, demonic blood feud would have thrown any ruler off kilter. But if it had been her father confronted with that choice, between life or death, she knew he would have done differently. Chosen blood, or pride, or whatever it took to keep Hyrule out from under the veil of twilight.

Powerlessness need not mean surrender. Midna had taught her that.

The truth was the gods had taken pity on her. They sent someone to correct her mistakes. A Hero to slay her enemies, and another princess to lead the charge while she accepted her imprisonment. While she did nothing. They had managed to dredge Hyrule up out of the twilight by the skin of their teeth.

She doubted the gods would be so generous a second time.

Claws suddenly rapped against the flagstones, and she startled to her feet just as a blue-eyed wolf bounded over the threshold and skidded to an abrupt halt, his ears snapping erect as he caught sight of her.

She breathed, shoulders going lax at his familiarity and brow puckering at his form, "You."

He seemed to remember himself then, breaking from his stupor to trot towards her. Then he paused as though to kneel, only to realize he was still a wolf, ears and tail flopping at the oversight, and he dithered awkwardly in place, one paw hovering as he decided whether he should go through with it or make her wait as he changed form first.

Hero and wolf though he may have been, he was still a goatherd from a backwater province.

Honestly, his awkwardness made him less intimidating. He had accomplished so much, and she so little. It was comforting, knowing that her counterpart had shortcomings. She decided to put him out of his misery and moved down a few steps, lowering herself to sit at the foot of her throne rather than on it. If there was ever an indicator that a queen meant to dismiss protocol for a moment, sitting herself on the floor was it.

"You must wonder what I'm doing in this skeleton of a room," she began lightly, trying to save face. From her seat on the floor. It wasn't a contradiction as far as she was concerned. Sitting on the floor had been for him. Coming up here to mourn the incompetence of her reign, on the other hand, had been for her. And she had been very particular about doing that privately, so it did make her wonder. Her eyes narrowed gently. "How did you find me?"

His ears drooped sideways again, and he grudgingly put his nose to the floor, following it precisely over the route she had taken through the debris in demonstration, glancing up at her uncertainly when he reached the bottom of the stairs.

"I see," she said, arching a brow, and he looked as abashed as she had seen him in any shape.

He sat, tail swishing agitatedly, and then his snout scrunched, eyes disappearing, and with a great rear of his head he loosed a wheezing, unruly snort. Her lip quirked as he glared unguardedly about the room. The chamber probably still stank of Ganon.

"Sometimes I envy you," she found herself saying, and he tilted his head in a gesture that was decidedly anthropomorphic. A stiff smile formed on her mouth, shields erecting themselves out of habit at her lapse. She swallowed all the things she wanted to say, musing instead, "It must be liberating."

One ear pulled back. He looked disappointed. For a wolf.

"I'm sorry if I caused any worry, coming up here alone," she deflected quickly, forcing her smile to sit more convincingly on her lips. His expression suggested it wasn't working. "I just… needed to think. And after everything that's happened in this room…"

She gave up on the smile. His tail had stilled on the stone.

"It seemed appropriate."

He stared for so long without a word that she would have been annoyed or unnerved—except, of course, that he couldn't speak even if he wanted to. Not without changing shape.

She wondered why he didn't. She wondered what about her, what about all of this, compelled him to stay an animal.

And he was still staring. And she was starting to feel seen through.

"There's no danger. You're free to go," she hinted, frowning gently, and he tilted his head again, like that was the most absurd thing he'd ever heard.

Then, instead of turning to leave, he coiled and pounced up the stairs in two graceful bounds. For the first time, she felt an instinctual thrill of fear. Not that he would hurt her, of course. But this form was a reflection of his true self. A hunter. A predator. She had glimpsed that side of him, briefly, as he dueled with Ganondorf; but even then he was eerily controlled. It was only now, eye level with the wolf-form and relatively vulnerable, that she thought she could imagine what he might look like _out _of control.

But then he got down on his belly, laying his massive head on his outstretched paws, and stared up at her out of blue eyes that were trapped somewhere between twilight and dawn. His brows puckered to take her in from his lowly angle and shifted with every turn of his eyes, asking an eternal, sweet-voiced question, and she felt distinctly manipulated. She kept her frown firmly in place through sheer force of will.

"What?"

His head flopped sideways again atop his paws. And just like that, his transformation from fearsome beast to lap dog was complete.

"Link, please," she groaned, tossing her eyes at his antics. "I just want to be alone."

And then he _whined_.

It was just a little sound. It didn't last long, or resonate about the room. But it struck her right in the chest, because it was like the sound she wanted to make inside. Because it was raw, simple, unassuming sympathy. It made her clench her jaw. It made her eyes water as she stared at him. And then he pressed his nose into the hand fisted in her skirt, and she couldn't help but open her palm and run it across his wide, coarse forehead and between his ears.

"Stupid dog," she whispered, face crumpling as the tears she had been spending the better part of a year trying to swallow finally spilled from her eyes, and curled her fingers deep in his thick, warm coat.

He inched closer, higher, and she let him, her fingers slipping down his neck as it came up and knotting again at his shoulders, and laid her cheek against the soft plume of his ear.

"What am I going to do?" she whispered. "How do I restore their confidence, after everything?"

She shut her eyes and turned her face into his fur, reflexively shifting her grip, scratching beneath his throat. He extended his neck as she found a particularly pleasing spot, and she laughed brokenly.

"I don't know how to fix this," she admitted, sniffling. "It feels like I've fallen too far. Let too many people down. Didn't stand my ground when it mattered most."

He didn't try to talk her out of it, or tell her how wonderful she was—or worse, agree with her. He just sat with her, letting her tangle her fingers in his coat. Letting her lean further into his warmth, bury in him until her tears started to ebb.

"You're a good listener," she decided, a small smile tugging ruefully at her mouth.

He let his tongue hang out and panted.

Eventually—she wasn't sure when; part way between crying and not crying—fur turned to cloth and skin, and the soft ear she had been laying her cheek against became the hollow of his throat, and his arms were across her shoulders, blotting out the cool air. She didn't know how long it had been since he had changed, or how long she let herself stay there even after she noticed, and all at once it occurred to her that if she couldn't recall, it had definitely been too long.

She sat up quickly, trying to snap her poise back into place and failing miserably, and murmured, "I'm sorry."

"You don't—" he began, his face all regret, but he checked, unsure, his hands hovering between them as though to reach for her, or ask a question. "I can change back."

"No, don't be silly," she breathed, though, if she was honest, she was a lot more comfortable when he was a wolf. And then she startled herself, because that wasn't true at all. She had been most comfortable when he was himself, and she let her guard down, and she was in his arms. She _promptly _dismissed that train of thought, burying herself back in the safe confines of propriety. "It was kind of you to come looking for me. I'm sorry I unburdened myself on you like that."

His mouth twisted a bit, in that awkward way it often did when he was struggling for the right words. In her experience, he never found them.

"You said I was a good listener," he murmured, smiling crookedly, and she met his eyes, surprised. "When I'm in that shape, it doesn't bother anyone when I have nothing insightful to say."

"You have insights," she tried to hedge, and the look he passed her could only be described as condemning.

"I don't know what the future holds, Princess," he finally said. "And unless you ask me to track something through the woods or hew your enemies in half, I don't know what I can do to help you. But I intend to serve you."

She opened her mouth to object—to send him home, or say she hadn't earned it, or at the very least release him from whatever sense of duty kept him nearby—but he said, before she could draw breath,

"I think you did the right thing."

She mustered a soft, watery smile, aching to thank him but not quite able to get the words out of her mouth. His eyes were the same blue as the wolf's, trapped between twilight and dawn.

"I'm sorry I called you a stupid dog."

He scoffed, resting his elbows on his knees and threading his hands. "I've been called worse."

She let herself lean a little closer, close enough that their shoulders touched. Technically inappropriate, yes, but they were already sitting on the floor. She confided quietly, "I don't have any tracking or hewing for you to do. But I could use a good listener."

He hummed a pithy agreement, leaning into her, too. Then a flicker of uncertainty furrowed his brow, and he amended clumsily, "I can't do both at once, though. If I want to track I need to be in the wolf shape. But the hewing—"

"Stop talking, Link," she smiled, linking her arm in his elbow.

The sunset poured in through the hole in the ceiling and the west-facing colonnade. A broken princess and the hero she didn't deserve let it wash over them in silence. If she had been with anyone else, that silence might have worried her; but she didn't wonder what it might mean with him. He was just listening.


End file.
